


Third Time's the Charm

by Azzandra



Category: Mass Effect, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Alien Culture, Cross-Species Friendships, Fluff, Gen, Humor, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Prodromos, Romance, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-10-24 17:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 10,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10746414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azzandra/pseuds/Azzandra
Summary: A slice of life story about the colonists on Prodromos. Or, I guess, since this is sci-fi, it's a series of Lower-Deck Episodes.





	1. Evelyn

**Author's Note:**

> We don't really get as much insight into the colonists' lives on Prodromos as I'd like, so I thought I'd fix this. With fanfic.
> 
> Mostly it will follow a group of OCs and minor canon characters, but I'll vary the characters that appear in each chapter to explore different aspect of life on Prodromos, or cross-cultural alien interactions.

 Evelyn knew the moment Max walked through the door that he was going to be imparting some particularly juicy piece of gossip to her. She cranked the music up on her earbuds and continued inputting information into the fabricator, and when Max spoke, she heard only an indistinct buzz over the music.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Max's expression growing just a big less smug as he realized Evelyn wasn't even listening. He sighed in the dramatic Max fashion, employing his whole body since Evelyn couldn't hear him, and then he sat on Evelyn's desk, next to her terminal.

Evelyn continued tapping away at her keyboard until Max had to reach over and tug the earbud out of her ear.

"What'cha doin'?" he asked.

"Adjusting parameters," Evelyn replied.

"On what?"

"Trying out native materials for fabrication," Evelyn replied. "Got a preliminary report from the Nexus tech division. Prodromos has some completely new minerals that show promise." She turned to look at Max. "I'm making a hammer."

"Cool, you do that," Max said, frowning slightly.

It was clear that she'd left Max torn. On one hand, he probably really wanted to impart whatever amazing news item had brought him here. On the other, why would Evelyn be making an obsolete tool like a hammer.

"Why?" he finally asked.

Evelyn turned to him, unable to hold back a smile.

"Don't worry your pretty little kneecaps about it," she said, patting his leg for emphasis.

He snorted a laugh.

"You're a monster and I don't know why we're friends," he said flatly.

"I'm the only one who puts up with your constant gossiping," she replied just as flatly.

"Speaking of which," Max said, seizing on the provided opening, "did you hear about who Mayor Bradley is bringing back from his little jaunt?"

"Are you going to make me guess?"

"Yes."

Evelyn closed the program for the fabricator and opened up her personal correspondence. She'd received a ping for a work assignment. Habitation request. If Mayor Bradley was bringing back guests, this was likely the reason for the ping.

"Mm, the turian primarch?" Evelyn said, delaying as she brought up the details. She was careful to keep her face impassive, even though she felt a bit of eye-popping would have been warranted in this case.

"Not even trying, are you? Come on, a real guess this time."

Evelyn scanned over the assignment and then sent the details to her omnitool.

"Lady Sweat on her Heleus tour," Evelyn replied.

"Too soon, Ev. I mean, yeah, she's been dead for six hundred years at this point, but too soon."

"Okay, well, we can continue playing later, I have a work thing," she said. "Mayor Bradley asked me to prepare some quarters specifically for our angara guests."

Max made a choked sound as the rug was pulled out from under him.

"That's cheating, Kearns!" he shouted as she headed out the door. Evelyn gave him a jaunty wave without looking back.

* * *

 

By the looks of the message, she was going to have to prepare lodgings not just for a group of angara, but about a dozen Initiative personnel as well. 

This was altogether an easy task. As outposts were meant to be assembled quickly, the buildings were little more than  mix-and-match cargo pods, meant to be attached to one another easily. Other than being considerably larger and heavier, they were not unlike Lego pieces.

For the Initiative personnel, she could just as well disperse them among colonists without assigned roommates. Given that most people's families were still on ice, there were plenty of available bunks.

She checked in with Dr. Ramirez beforehand to find out what he knew about the incoming guests' physical condition and potential medical accommodations, and the answer was fairly vague, but it didn't seem anyone was in urgent need of care.

She had even less news about the angara, but based on the scant information she had from the Nexus infopacks, and employing a bit of common sense, she was going to assume that they would want to stick together. They were coming to an alien colony, following a traumatic experience, and relying on the kindness of relatively new acquaintances. Yeah, they'd want to stick together.

 

* * *

 

Evelyn felt each satisfying click as the rooms attached to each other, even though she wasn't the one operating the crane. Tichus Tiervian, who _was_ operating the crane, gave her sidelong looks each time she made a pleased hum.

"Kid, it's just blocks," Tichus said. "I don't get why this makes you so happy."

"Oh, right, I forget turians don't have Legoes," Evelyn said, and patted his shoulder with pity. "No Legoes and mandatory bootcamp. Poor dears."

"I'm starting to get why Max complains about you all the time," Tichus grunted, as he slid the final block into place and heard the final click as it connected.

"I don't force him to be friends with me, he just loves complaining that much," Evelyn said. She jumped out of the crane cabin.

From there, it was the basics. 

Of course, the basics could be tricky when you were trying to provide for an alien species you had only the most general information on.

Mattresses and bedding. Toiletries. Electronics. Water rations.

Evelyn checked the average angara proportions, and concluded, from there, that the mattresses would have to be considerably larger than human requirements. As big as turian or salarian mattresses, but probably softer. She hated guessing at these things, but if she was off base, she'd make it up later. Or the angarans would move on before it became much of an issue. 

She managed to grab a few people from Supply to help her with assembling the beds; one of them was even a biotic, which helped considerably with hauling the stuff.

Bedding was easier, if only for lack of choice. She hoped the standard issue scratchy Initiative blankets wouldn't be seen as some sort of insult, but at least the sheets and pillows were good quality.

Evelyn actually had to pause and wonder if angara used pillows, and if yes, if they were at least the same kind that humans did. She picked up a pillow and turned it over, trying to figure out if the shape would be uncomfortable with angara physiology. She missed the days when she could just pick up lifestyle magazines if she wanted to know the latest alien trends in interior design. She was going to have to start her own if she wanted a lifestyle magazine now. At least that was an idea for later down the line.

She was going to have to follow up. Maybe convince one of the angara to show her any pictures they might have of their bedroom. In a non-creepy way, hopefully, though Evelyn had never quite mastered how to ask 'show me where you sleep' in a way that didn't unsettle people.

Until then, she added some other pillow variations to the angara living quarters, including some of the neck supports turians used, and some asari cushions. The angara would know what worked best for them, and in a pinch, Evelyn would fabricate something just for them.

Next were the electronics. She hastily set up a terminal on a desk, and then switched the climate controls from being omni-tool activated to be accessed by the terminal. No telling if the angara would have omni-tools or any compatible devices, but given how Eos weather was still somewhat temperamental, they would definitely want access to the climate control.

After further consideration, she switched the options on the terminal from pictographic to all-written. It was better not to put the angara in the positions of having to interpret standardized icons from a different galaxy; their translators would hopefully be more useful with the written language. 

She also added in the application tracking the water ration for the building, dragging it onto the screen right next to the climate control.

Satisfied with this, Evelyn moved on to the next, very important issue. What the hell was she going to do about toiletries?


	2. Evelyn, August Bradley

"Which of these smell nicer to the angara, you think? Mint or lavender? Both? Neither?" Evelyn had a bottle of liquid soap in each hand, and weighed each one in turn.

"I am not a beautician," Dr. Ramirez said flatly.

"You're a doctor, I know," she said. "So shouldn't you know about this stuff then?" Evelyn reached into the box next to her, and retrieved a new bottle. "Okay, this one is alsara scented. It's a fruit from Thessia. It smells like summer holidays to asari."

"That's... unusually specific information to possess," Dr. Ramirez said, as he looked towards Evelyn.

"I ask unusually specific questions," Evelyn said. She offered the cap to Dr. Ramirez. "Just smell it and tell me if you think it's okay for the angara."

"How do you expect me to know, exactly?" Dr. Ramirez asked, now growing annoyed.

"You're a doctor, you should know about... biological stuff? I don't know?"

Dr. Ramirez sighed deeply and activated the scanner on his omni-tool. After scanning the bottles, he ran the results through some sort of program. It looked like a cross-reference of a list of chemicals.

"Not the mint," he said. "It has an ingredient some angara are sensitive to."

"Well, I could've done that," Evelyn grumbled.

"And yet you spent half an hour pestering me instead," Dr. Ramirez said. His omni-tool pinged just then, cutting off whatever rant he was ready to launch into. "Now if you don't mind, I actually do have patients coming up."

"They're here already?" Evelyn jumped to her feet.

"Yes, now please clear out," Dr. Ramirez said, and all but swept Evelyn out the door.

 

* * *

 

The angara were... a colorful lot. In the very literal sense of the word. There were a half-dozen of them, mostly in the purple-ish range, though there was one particularly striking green angara. 

They shuffled uncertainly after they left the clinic. Perhaps they thought the mandatory bio-scans were a bit intrusive--which Evelyn definitely thought they were--but at the same time, it would be far too embarrassing for the third colony attempt on Eos to be wiped out by some cross-species-transmittable cold, or something.

Evelyn intercepted them and cheerfully introduced herself as their contact in Habitation, and as such, offered to show them to their living quarters. 

"As well as show you the ropes," Evelyn said.

"There are ropes?" one of the angara asked--the green one, tall and thin and with a high voice. Evelyn would find out later her name was Yalla.

"Not literally," Evelyn said. "Figure of speech."

"Ah," Yalla breathed out, satisfied, and activated the device on her wrist. It was sort of like an omni-tool, though apparently the display the angara favored was spherical. Evelyn couldn't wait to find out why, but put that question aside for now.

" _Were_ there ever ropes?" another one of the angara asked. This one was a dark nightsky blue, broad, and teetering at the edge of the group as if ready to break off and go exploring.

"Suppose there had to be," Evelyn said, blinking slowly. "At some point. I'll have to find out now."

"But there are no ropes now," the same dark blue angara asked, his mouth slanting into a smile. His name, as Evelyn would learn shortly, was Hasuul.

"They probably wouldn't let me work with ropes anyway," Evelyn muttered. "Safety hazard." But she still got a calculating look in her eye, and her gaze drifted to one of the rock formations in the distance, as she followed some train of thought to its conclusion.

Mayor Bradley walked up to the group just then, and he arrived just in time to change the rails on whatever Evelyn was contemplating.

"No trouble, I hope," Bradley said, nodding in greeting to the angara.

"Not at all," Yalla said, smiling faintly. "Thank you once again for allowing us to join your colony."

"Join? Like, living here? For keeps?" Evelyn asked, startled.

"Yes," Yalla confirmed, and then, a bit more uncertain, continued, "Would that be alright?"

"Ooooh, that's even better!" Evelyn said. She almost clapped her hands together in glee, before figuring that the sound would startle the angara; instead she laced her fingers together like she was about to pray, and turned to Mayor Bradley. "Does that mean I can requisition some extra supplies? You know, in case anything should arise?"

"I'll talk to Connor about it," Mayor Bradley confirmed. "But don't go too crazy," he added, as Evelyn rolled on the balls of her feet, apparently ready to float into the atmosphere buoyed by sheer glee. 

Bradley didn't get the sense she'd caught that last bit.

 

* * *

 

Evelyn Kearns was a good kid, and if anyone asked August Bradley about her, that was his story and he was sticking to it. She was also a handful if she didn't have anything productive to channel her energy into. Like one of those puppies that chewed up all your shoes if you didn't give it enough stimulation.

So sticking her with helping the angara make their new house a little bit homier seemed like just the kind of task Evelyn would love to sink her teeth into. 

Or, at least, Bradley certainly decided it had been a good call when he dropped in to check on his new angara charges and see how they were settling in. He found Evelyn lying on the floor, propped on her elbows and with a bare foot in the air as she let two angara inspect her toes.

"Nice to see people getting along," Bradley remarked from the doorway. 

One of the angara was frozen in the middle of poking Evelyn's sole, and the other was holding her leg, apparently fascinated by her anklebones. 

The one who had shown him in, a pretty dark purple young woman named Sirida, gave a warm chuckle at the sight of everyone's expressions.

"Uh... Adherence," Evelyn said. "We were talking about the shower. The, um... the bumps on the... floor mat..."

Bradley knew what she meant. The mats that they all used on bathroom floors had been Evelyn's touch, made out of some weirdly specific rubber and ribbed to make sure there was no way in hell anyone could slip on them, no matter what kind of foot they had. A kind of everyday object you didn't think about if you were a regular kind of person, and the kind of object whose creator seemed inconsequential in the grander scheme of things.

Unless, Bradley supposed, you had that person working for your town, constantly deconstructing and reconstructing everyday objects until she found a shape that she was satisfied every species in the galaxy could use. Bradley had had to limit Evelyn's resource allocation for the fabricator because she was forever pursuing some perfect new drawer handle shape, or perfect window shutter, or ideal medicine bottle, and that was all fine and good as long as they had resources to burn, but they didn't yet.

The Initiative certainly needed people like Evelyn to build a new civilization in this galaxy, but Evelyn also proved why the Initiative needed people like Bradley to keep the former in check.

"Don't need a play by play," Bradley said with a shrug. "Just thought I'd see how you're all doing."

"Wonderfully," the angara holding Evelyn's leg said; he was light blue, one of his eyes a burnt-out black and surrounded by scars.

Gavvil. Bradley remembered his name, though this was the first time he'd heard the young man speak. He struck Bradley as a bit on the shy side, though there was nothing retiring about him at the moment. He was smiling brightly.

"It has been an education," the other angara, Hasuul, said as he lowered his hand from Evelyn's foot. 

"I need to fabricate tubs," Evelyn said, as she finally scrambled to pull her sock back on. "For bathing."

"Shower not doing it?" Bradley asked, glancing over at the angara.

"The shower is fine," Sirida said. "We cannot complain. But, when we wash, we prefer soaking. We find it more..."

"Cleansing," Evelyn supplied, when Sirida couldn't find the word.

"Yes," Sirida said.

"Lots more skin flaps than other species," Evelyn continued unprompted.

Gavvil snorted a laugh, while Hasuul and Sirida looked unsure if they should be insulted.

"Thank you, Evelyn," Bradley said dryly.

"Oh, that was one of those impolitic remarks you warned me about," Evelyn said, realization striking her belatedly.

"Remember what we talked about maybe ending your comments a sentence earlier than you think you should?" Bradley asked.

Evelyn gave a put-upon sigh.

"I've been practicing," she said.

The angara, at least, seemed amused.

"I'll make sure you have what you need to make your bath tubs," Bradley promised, and watched as Evelyn's face lit right up. "Send in a request to Supply. Anything else I should know about?"

"I need to learn weaving," Evelyn said after a moment's consideration, and Bradley did not ask. He knew he was going to hear a lot more about it by the time it was over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter, we're shifting over to the angara POV, and getting their perspective on things! I should have it up on Monday.


	3. Evelyn, Yalla & Hasuul

Eos was, strictly speaking, not an ideal place to live by angara standards.

Yalla supposed that it was a blessing if the aliens _preferred_ such environments, as it meant less competition for planets to populate across the cluster. They certainly didn't seem particularly enthused by Voeld, other than for the ice they mined for their Nexus and new outposts. Even Havarl was, by the description of one human, 'too sticky' for their tastes.

As one of the humans had said of Eos, "at least it's a dry heat", seemingly without mirth, that had solidified in Yalla's mind that the Milky Way aliens had wildly divergent standards for what were optimal weather conditions.

"Do humans truly like this sort of environment?" Yalla had idly asked one day. Evelyn seemed entirely fascinated by the minutia of angara households, and she was always at hand for some cultural inquiries. She did not seem to take offense as much as other humans, either.

"We _evolved_ in this sort of environment," Evelyn had replied distractedly.

"Truly?" Yalla blurted, surprised by the revelation.

"Well, somewhere hot and dry, so, yes, a lot like this," Evelyn said, and shrugged as if it were nothing much worth mentioning.

And who could fault Yalla's surprise, when every morning the humans would rub a substance they called 'sun block' onto their skins, as to avoid long-term damage from the sun? The lighter humans had to slather it over every exposed stretch of their hides, to avoid it turning a painful looking red, but even Evelyn, whose complexion was a yellowish-brown, had indicated the spots of darker pigmentation across her face and explained they were 'freckles', and that they meant she was more vulnerable to sun damage than other humans.

"It's not so bad," Evelyn had said, "and we need sunlight anyway. For vitamins, and also so our brains don't turn all sad and pathetic." She gave a lopsided smile as she said so, as if to punctuate the irreverence of her own words.

"Angara need sunlight as well," Yalla had said, and gone on to explain in slightly more scientific terms how the sun was needed to fuel their natural bioelectricity and allow them to function. How angara without regular exposure to sunlight would go dark, and weaken, and eventually die.

Evelyn had nodded along as Yalla explained, and it hadn't seemed at the time that she was paying attention, but Yalla caught glimpses of the notes Evelyn was taking on her omni-tool, and later she would see Evelyn working at her terminal, happily sketching away some concept for windows that allowed more sunlight in. 

She learned then, that when Evelyn truly began paying attention, her gaze would drift off, and fix on some point in the middle distance. Yalla always knew when she said something interesting to Evelyn, because the human would break eye contact and stare off at nothing.

"She is an odd one to read," Yalla told Hasuul one day.

"Some of the other humans think so too," Hasuul replied. 

They were standing on the platform outside their residence, the makeshift balcony, as it were, and Hasuul pointed to where Evelyn was talking to Kim Connor, in charge of supply. Evelyn was gesticulating. She cycled through the same sets of gestures as she apparently repeated some explanation, and Kim Connor's body language was visibly uncertain. Likely they were discussing something Evelyn had not gotten permission for, or that Kim suspected Evelyn would require permission to do. Though that conclusion might have just been informed by what they already knew of Evelyn's antics.

"You were gone with her earlier," Yalla commented as she looked at Evelyn.

"Ah, yes. We hiked," Hasuul said.

"You... hiked. You were gone since before dawn." Yalla tried not to sound too incredulous. She did not think Hasuul was lying, but that was not the answer she was expecting. 

"Evelyn informed me that is how you hike. You begin at a time when your body is screaming at you for being an idiot because you're not in bed."

"Truly," Yalla deadpanned.

"It was to avoid the noon glare on the way back," Hasuul explained more reasonably. "She wanted to show me the sunrise on this planet."

In fact, Evelyn had mentioned in an aside that the planet was named after a goddess of dawn from some ancient human mythology. Hasuul had wanted to ask more, but Evelyn had skimmed over the fact quickly to get at the point that she wanted to record sunrises from all around the planet.

For that morning, they met at a path just outside Prodromos. Evelyn had requisitioned an armor for personal use that day; she had a light pistol on her hip, a necessary precaution, but the armor was mostly because using a jump-jet without armor could be a recipe for broken bones.

Eos was a different place at night. Hushed, and still. The dunes were ghostly shapes in the distance. The stars were of a piercing brightness against the sky, but the only light that helped them see came from Eos' lone satellite, and their flashlights.

They walked in relative silence. Evelyn would point out a path, speaking barely above a whisper, as if afraid to shatter the silence of the planet. Still, there was the sound of things scuttling in the darkness--snapping maws, too many feet, sending sand falling off somewhere in the distance. They scattered when he or Evelyn activated their jump-jets, startled by the sound or the burst of light. 

Evelyn led him to a bluff overlooking the desert. They sat down on the ground heavily, and merely caught their breath for a few minutes.

That early in the morning, there was a pleasant coolness to the air. The climate was much improved by the vault, but the planet would perhaps always be an arid place. The sun had not risen yet, but on the horizon, a green band of diffuse color was tinging the sky.

"Sunrises on Earth and gold and pink," Evelyn said suddenly. "On Elysium, they're more violet."

Evelyn had mentioned Elysium before, the colony where she grew up. A strange place to imagine: nominally a human colony, but half its population aliens. Hasuul's only point of reference for such things was Kadara, but from how Evelyn spoke of Elysium, it didn't sound as if it were the same thing at all.

For now, however, Evelyn's focus was on the sunrise. She had a camera with her, some specialized piece of equipment meant to capture images in dizzying detail. Some humans took photos as a hobby, considered it art.

Hasuul liked this idea. Various ways of recording experiences had been elevated to artform by the angara, but given their natural bioelectrical abilities, plenty of those forms were not precisely accessible to aliens. Photography on its own had a simplicity to it that had not yet been fully explored in angara art.

"Have you ever seen an Eos sunrise?" Evelyn asked, turning the lens of her camera towards the horizon. She snapped a few shots, though it was still too dark.

"I have not even been awake for one yet," Hasuul admitted. "I am pathologically diurnal," he added with a grin.

Evelyn grinned as well, though she was looking at the camera, adjusting some settings.

"I keep weird hours," Evelyn admitted. "I haven't been sleeping as well since coming out of stasis." She gave a furtive glance around, as if someone might be listening, and continued in a conspirative undertone, "I think cryo might've messed with our brains."

"Messed... how?" Hasuul asked warily.

Evelyn was quiet for a long while, and Hasuul almost thought she wasn't going to answer the question, but eventually she continued.

"Things went real bad, real fast on the Nexus," she said. "Never felt right, the way people were acting. Still doesn't feel right that people got kicked out the way they did. Being in disagreement isn't the same as being a bad person."

Hasuul, who had been to Kadara Port, and met the Nexus Exiles in person and come away from the experience none too impressed, resisted the urge to address Evelyn's naivety. The Exiles were undoubtedly scum, but when they dropped in on Kadara and saw the kett rounding up angara, they still put a stop to it. Finding out that the Exiles were the refuse of the Milky Way aliens' society had been surprising to Hasuul, but perhaps it spoke of how repulsive the kett were as a species, if other alien species' criminals would not even stoop as low as the kett would. It had made Hasuul want to pursue some strange kernel of hope that the kett were exceptions, and that friends could be found among aliens.

"Yeah," Evelyn muttered to herself, "definitely messed with our head."

She looked up just then, and her camera clicked. And clicked again. The sunlight finally broke, the narrow band of green expanding into luminescent turquoise. Hasuul could see the auroras of the sunrise, which he was given to understand most aliens without the same bioelectrical abilities could not, but even lacking this sense, Evelyn still seemed enthralled by what she was seeing. Her camera continued to click diligently as the sun crawled ever upwards.

"Do you know, I prefer sunsets," Hasuul said, as he watched the shadows crow shorter. "Would it be agreeable if I took you to see one sometime?"

Evelyn smiled widely at Hasuul.

"Pick a good one," she said. "I'll be bringing my camera."

"And so," Hasuul explained to Yalla when they spoke, "it seems that I have committed myself."

His smile was apologetic, yet Yalla knew he was not at all sorry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing about the angara on Prodromos is turning out incredibly fun, and I have at least a couple more angara chapters coming up. Next chapter should be up by Thursday, I think?
> 
> If anyone has anything in particular they'd like to see me explore in this fic, feel free to suggest it. Not making any guarantees (because I am terrible at keeping promises), but I'm up for knowing what you guys are interested in.


	4. Yalla

The more time Yalla spent in Prodromos, the more she got a sense of its rhythms and routines. She could, upon rising at dawn, see the survey teams getting ready to head out, clumped around their vehicles as they synced their omni-tools and sorted out work assignments. Yalla could set her clock by the shuttle which took off at the same time each morning for the Nexus--a deliberate scheduling decision--and as the morning inched on, she could almost predict the order in which the researchers and scientists of the outpost left their homes for their labs. She could also recognize the daily joggers, on their run around Prodromos.

It lent a sense of normality to the place. Even for the Milky Way aliens, Prodromos was still a frontier town, but it was settling into familiarity, such as it could be conceived.

Yalla could feel that sense of normality seeping into the angara who lived in Prodromos as well, as they began settling into their own routines. Yalla had managed to finagle herself into an apprenticeship of sort, learning data processing techniques from some of the didactically inclined technicians. One of them called her the 'intern', which she was given to understand was a kind of rite of passage young humans underwent to prove themselves worthy at the beginning of their professional careers.

Max Evers in particular insisted she was doing excellently, and thus would be spared some of the more menial aspects of internship, such as the fetching of coffee.

"There's not much coffee left anyway," Max had said, quietly mournful as he looked off into the distance. Perhaps looking towards the Milky Way, where doubtless there was a bounty of coffee to be had, tragically out of his reach.

Still, Yalla's time in the lab could be fraught with tension at times--mostly her own. The aliens had at least some sense of each other, differing species though they may have been. Yalla felt herself learning by painful inches what each expression, each gesture, each turn of phrase meant for every individual and their species.

The aliens were very understanding, of course. Very patient, and willing to accommodate. But it felt, at times, as if they were having an easier time accommodating her than Yalla did understanding them.

And they certainly seemed to have an easier time understanding each other than Yalla did any of them.

She was assisting Max one day, when a turian from Exostudies, Darket Tiervian, came to request some data processing. Max, who was of a chatty disposition even for a human, maintained an almost entirely one-sided conversation with Darket as he sorted through the data.

Yalla's attention drifted from Max's screen--the information being sorted through programs into the tables and columns and neatly sorted data--to Max's cocky smile as he talked to Darket.

"So we're all really on the edge of our seats for strawberries right now," Max was explaining. "I heard they had to assign extra security to Hydroponics."

"Hm," was Darket's only response to that statement, as she sedately watched the data being compiled. Her mandibles flicked open, stayed in position for a moment, before relaxing again.

"I know, I know," Max said, seeing Darket's expression. Yalla couldn't identify what exactly Max knew or how he came to know that merely by the movement of Darket's mandibles, but Max continued, "I mean, personally, I don't even like strawberries, but you know how it is."

Darket apparently _did_ know how it was, because she crossed her arms before replying,

"Someone came up to me the other day offering me a bar of dextro-chocolate in exchange for half an hour with the particle scanner."

"What did they want with the particle scanner?"

"Didn't ask. I had to leave on my snack break."

Max began laughing uproariously. Darket also chuckled, her voice lower but more resonant, and her mandibles twitched again, more of a fluttering this time.

"Perks to not being military anymore, eh?" Max said.

"I'm turian, I carry it with me," Darket replied.

It wasn't long before Max finished processing Darket's data, and Darket left to return to her own tasks.

"How did you learn to do that?" Yalla asked Max.

The doors had not even completely closet behind Darket, before automatically sliding open again. Evelyn walked in, and she must have heard the tail end of Yalla's question, because she asked,

"Do what?"

Max turned to look at Yalla, and then Evelyn, and Evelyn looked at Max and Yalla, and then Yalla completed the circle by looking from one to the other.

"How did you learn to read alien expressions?" Yalla clarified. "I can grasp well enough what humans or asari are feeling, as you are similar to angara to a degree. And salarians have very expressive voices--"

"They do?" Max mouthed, apparently surprised by this.

"--but I'm having considerable trouble parsing turians." Yalla looked at Max expectantly. "Yet you don't. How did you learn?"

"Well," Max started, frowning in thought as if he had never considered the question before. "I guess... it comes over time, and repeated interactions, and--"

"Closed captioning on vids," Evelyn interjected.

"What?" Max said.

"Closed captioning?" Yalla grew interested. "The subtitles some of your vids have, you mean?"

"The detailed ones," Evelyn said. "Scoot over," she waved to Max.

Max obediently moved aside, and Evelyn sat down at his terminal.

"Aside from the Nexus central library," Evelyn said, "we were also asked to make individual contributions to the Nexus media library. If we wanted to."

"Which Evelyn obviously wanted to," Max said.

"I uploaded every Elysium bootleg subtitles file I could find on the extranet," Evelyn said.

"Ah, the days when you could just find the answers to all your questions provided by shady strangers on the extranet," Max said, and then sighed deeply. "I think I miss the extranet more than coffee."

"I heard Dr. Camden's going to work on coffee beans after he gets strawberries, but we'll have to set the extranet up ourselves now. Assuming the Scourge doesn't make that impossible."

"You gave me hope just to take it away again, didn't you?"

"I do love to see you suffer," Evelyn said dryly. 

Yalla watched as Evelyn pulled up a vid. It was one that Yalla had already seen, at someone's recommendation. A humorous short about a turian and his pet varren. Much of the comedy was derived from slapstick, but the funny moments were few and far between, instead most of the production being taken up by long, lingering shot of the turian and the varren merely sitting there, staring at each other.

Evelyn paused the vid first, and then opened up some options menu, going down a long list marked "Subtitles". She ticked a particular option, 'Sublysium'.

"Elysium used to have, like, a lot of mixed programming," Evelyn explained, "because it had a lot of mixed audiences. Every Elysium channel had a whole hodge-podge of shows, movies and documentaries from all over the galaxy. Humans were kind of the newest in the neighborhood, so a lot of us didn't always get what we were watching, but interest in alien programming was still high, so some subbing group on the extranet came up with this idea of close captioning for alien nonverbal communication and cultural context. I think they were based in Elysium, because that's where their major audience was, but the idea pretty much spread like wildfire all across the extranet after that."

Yalla could see now what Evelyn meant. The vid had no dialogue yet, but the helpful string of text overlaid the image of the turian taking the varren out of its cage with "[turian trills encouragingly at varren]". Sure enough, Yalla could hear a sharp series of clicks which she had not noticed upon her first viewing, nor had she realized came from the turian until just then.

Yalla continued watching as the captions helpfully provided any number of plot-relevant emotional cues that she had not even known were there, such as "[crest tilt in annoyance or frustration]" or "[turian sound meant to soothe a pet]". In particular, the subs helped clarify the many subtle emotional indications of various mandible movements, such as the rapid fluttering of amusement, or the sharp, brief flicks of anger, or the slow spread of hopefulness.

It was a bit like a very low-tech version of the bioelectrical input angara movies usually provided, written down instead of transmitted by electric impulses. Where before turians had seemed strangely inscrutable to Yalla, with their faces too immobile, and their bodies too stiff, now an entire layer of body language had been revealed to her, that she would not even have guessed was there.

Unlike the first time she watched the vid, Yalla actually laughed until her eyes teared up.

"Are there more of these subs?" Yalla asked.

"Practically thousands," Evelyn replied, and keyed something on her omni-tool. "I'll transmit the file to your home terminal."

"Thank you," Yalla said, gathering Evelyn into her arms and giving her a tight hug. "This will be so helpful! I can't wait to show the others."

"Sure," Evelyn said, muffled by Yalla's chest. "Glad to."

Yalla then carefully released Evelyn, setting her upright again and smoothing down her shirt.

"Obviously," Yalla said seriously, "we must look into providing such subtitles for angara vids as well. It would only be fair."

"Oh, you don't have to--" Evelyn started.

"Please do!" Max interjected.

Evelyn looked at him, surprised, and Max shrugged.

"I know when I need help," he said.


	5. Hasuul & Gavvil

Hasuul was momentarily blinded as he stepped into the dwelling and out of the blinding Eos sun. Before he'd fully blinked away the veil of darkness from his eyes, however, he heard the giggling.

He stepped forward into the room, drawn by the sound, and by the time his vision righted itself, he was standing next to the terminal, where his brother Gavvil was clearly amused by something on the screen.

It clenched at something in Hasuul's chest to see Gavvil in such a light mood. Since losing his eye, Gavvil had been much more taciturn and easily startled--not so much because of the physical injury as because of the memory of pain.

"What are you reading?" Hasuul asked, and tried not to feel too badly when Gavvil flinched. 

He looked up at Hasuul, one eye clear blue, the other a scorched-out black, and an ease slowly settled over Gavvil's features again.

"It's the colony infoboard," Gavvil replied. He scooted his chair aside, so Hasuul could join him in looking at the screen. "They have a thread with a game called 'rock tag'."

The thread in question was full of pictures of the large rock formations which littered the deserts of Eos. It appeared people were running commentary on the photos.

"The survey teams take photos of any rock pillars they encounter while out and about Eos," Gavvil explained. "Then they post them to the infoboard and ask for people to name them."

"That is amusing?" Hasuul asked, somewhat skeptical.

"It is, the way they name them," Gavvil said.

From Hasuul's experience, the names the aliens gave tended to be plain or descriptive, when not mythological. 'Fairwinds Basin'. 'The Sheertop'. 'The Big Lake'. It appeared that practicality was not the purpose of this exercise, however.

One photo was of two large rock formations, their edges nearly touching.

_I'm calling this one the Gossipers_ , one colonist commented under the photo.

_Seconded_ , another person commented. _The question now is who they're talking about._

_'omg did u see those squishy things hanging around?' 'YEAH, can u believe it, the neighborhood's really going downhill since those monoliths moved in'_

_They're rock formation, people. They exist on a timescale we can't even imagine. They probably wouldn't even notice us yet._

_Look, I found the geologist._

_Can you do a petrologic study and discover who they're talking shit about?_

The conversation continued much in that vein for a while. Other photos had similar sort of conversations attached.

One particular tapering rocky outcrop had slightly more bewildering commentary beneath it.

_You guys see it too, right?,_ the first commenter asked. _I'm not the only one._

_Yes, Steve, we've all read Fornax. We see it too._

_Should this thread get a NSFW tag?_

_Yes, but only for turians._

"I'm not sure I understand," Hasuul said.

"I believe this is sexual humor," Gavvil said. "The aliens consider sexuality something of a taboo subject."

"Ah," Hasuul mouthed, as it clicked for him. "What is Fornax?"

"It's an erotic publication from the Milky Way," Gavvil explained, as he began typing up a comment.

"If you already know what it is, then why are you asking them?" Hasuul said, as he read Gavvil's question on the screen.

Gavvil turned a wicked smile on Hasuul.

"It's just very amusing to see their reactions," Gavvil said.

And as Hasuul would discover, it was very amusing indeed.


	6. Darket/Yalla

_What made you come to Andromeda?_

It was the one question that went around and came back to you with certainty. It was _the_ question, the newest form of small talk in the new galaxy, and at this point, everyone's answer flowed smoothly.

Darket felt not quite as much at ease yet with hers. Everyone else had had more time to polish their answer, but Darket... she was not supposed to be pulled out of cryo so soon. Second wave, that was the deal. Knew it when she went in. Didn't expect any different.

Her family were less satisfied with the wait. That was the difference between being in cryo and out, Darket supposed, but she hadn't wanted the rules bent for her. She wouldn't have agreed to the Pathfinder letting her out sooner. It was well-intentioned, and it made her family happy, but she did not like the feeling of indebtedness this caused in her.

But Darket could not begrudge the Pathfinder's decision as much when she could see her Uncle Tichus' face turn to joy as he and her cousins met Darket at the Prodromos shuttle pad, or the way her younger sisters' and brother's faces lit up as they ran up to her for a hug. And Darket could not feel sorry for herself when she heard that her other brother was dead, lost in one of the innumerable disasters which had struck the Initiative since arriving in Andromeda.

So she worked. She adjusted quickly to her post in Exostudies, and even managed to find some time for extracurriculars; the next time the Tempest was on Eos, Darket presented the Pathfinder with the information she'd managed to extrapolate about the kett supply routes. That took the edge off, some.

It was also an opportunity to practice her answer. _Why did you come to Andromeda?_ the Pathfinder had asked. To be nobody special somewhere very special, she'd said. She liked the cadence of it. As well-structured as poetry. (Turian poetry, at least. Other species had diverging notions of the craft.)

After a few weeks on Prodromos, after getting to meet so many new people, Darket had learned to see the question coming. She could pinpoint it on someone's tongue the moment before it passed their lips.

Yet when Yalla asked, Darket was taken by surprise.

"Why did you come to Andromeda?" the angara asked.

And in that second, Darket's mind drew a gaping blank.

 

* * *

 

Yalla had begun spending time in Exostudies. She was not an unwelcome sight; for quick-and-dirty data processing, people usually went to Max Evers in Central Archiving and Data Processing. He was a fiend with every program the Milky Way had ever devised for processing and compiling information, and for a preliminary analysis, he was usually a good choice.

"And my college roommates laughed when I said I was a library studies major," Max would snicker. "Who's in a brand new galaxy now, though? Not Brad, that douchebag."

"Charming," Darket would reply, in the exact tone she'd heard human women use when they did not find the antics of their males at all charming.

But to the point, Yalla had been spending a great deal of time around Max and the other 'library mice' in Central Archiving, and had picked up a great deal of their skills, even if she had not had as much time to refine them. Now that she had apparently moved on to Exostudies, having her around meant that most of the time, they did not need to drop in on Max. Yalla was more than happy to do all the tedious busywork that the researchers usually dreaded. It was all still novel to her.

Darket was not sure what to make of Yalla yet. The angara was a soft, warm presence in whichever room she walked into, and there was something both earnest and eager about her large blue eyes. Darket found herself... distracted. Her attention tended to... stray, when Yalla was around.

She made the mistake of being too obvious about this, because the other people in the lab most definitely noticed.

"Okay, look," one of Darket's human co-workers said, "when she asks you why you came to Andromeda, say it was to meet someone like her. Priceless pick-up line, you couldn't ask for a better set-up."

"Pick-up lines are trite and they can backfire," one of Darket's other co-workers opined; an asari maiden who tapped her stylus impatiently when she was exasperated.

She was doing it right now, stylus tapping against the edge of her datapad, tap, tap, tap, everything in her body language radiating 'why must humans be like this'. 

"Angara value honesty and emotional openness," the asari suggested instead.

"Emotional honestly is more of a second date kind of thing," the human muttered.

"It would be better to show your vulnerability," the asari continued undaunted. "It would highlight your desirability."

At the moment, the only thing Darket felt like showing was how embarrassed this conversation was making her.

"Why are you two trying to set me up with Yalla?" she asked.

"Uh, because you need all the help you can get?" the human said, shrugging.

"I am not trying to attract Yalla," Darket said firmly. "Please cease."

Her co-workers looked extremely skeptical about that claim, but let the matter drop.

But Yalla was on a half-shift that afternoon, and when she walked into the lab, she greeted everyone in the lab collectively, and then Darket specifically. Everyone noticed. Darket could see in their eyes that they noticed.

Yalla remained oblivious.

 

* * *

 

It became impossible to ignore that Yalla gravitated towards Darket. Where Darket could muster a modicum of self-control and poise, Yalla seemed absolutely unable or unwilling to conceal her feelings. When she smiled at Darket, she beamed. When Yalla wanted a second opinion, she looked to Darket first. When she had something to share, she wanted to let Darket know of it right away.

And Yalla was turning into a keen observer. Darket knew this because she was usually the object of Yalla's observations. 

"Oh, I haven't seen you smile like that until now," Yalla would say. Or, "Did you know your left mandible twitches a bit when you concentrate too hard? Just the left, though. Curious."

Darket had not known she possessed as many personal idiosyncrasies as Yalla noticed on a daily basis, and the knowing looks were getting worse by the hour.

"Just ask her out," Darket's human co-worker mouthed behind Yalla's back whenever Darket talked to the angara. "Dooo iiiit."

Her asari co-worker said nothing, but tap, tap, tap went her stylus again her desktop.

It was starting to get to Darket.

 

* * *

 

The awful truth was that Darket was beginning to seriously consider using that awful pick-up line. _Why did you come to Andromeda? To meet someone like you._

Yeah, no. It was genuinely deadful.

But she was still thinking about it, and unfortunately, that was exactly the moment Yalla picked to finally pop the question.

"Why did you decide to come to Andromeda?" Yalla asked, as she sorted a box of rocks into carefully labeled containers.

And Darket's mind stuttered to a halt as she was caught considering between the two answers she could give--the serious, practiced one, or the absolutely terrible pick-up line. It should not have been even a moment's thought, the correct answer was glaringly obvious, and yet. Here was Darket, considering the most stupid choice Andromeda had ever presented her with.

She was silent for much too long, because Yalla shrank back slightly.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I don't mean to pry!" Yalla said, and made to retreat, ready to leave the room.

"No!" Darket said, and her hand shot out, grabbing Yalla by the wrist before she could leave. "No, it's not that," Darket said in a more subdued voice, making sure her grip on Yalla's wrist was more relaxed. "It's just..."

Darket looked around the lab. Nobody else was there, thankfully.

"It's just, I was considering... asking you..." Darket dry-swallowed.

Yalla's eyes were wide and expectant, and her face was just so open it made something in Darket ache.

"Yes?" Yalla prompted, her voice low and husky in the silence of the lab.

"I was going to ask you what brings you to Prodromos," Darket said in a sudden fit of inspiration. "But I thought we could discuss it in a different setting. A better setting. A walk. If you wanted to go for a walk. Do you...?"

"I'd love to!" Yalla said, a smile stretching across her face. She turned her arm in Darket's grip so her hand slipped into Darket's, and then Yalla tugged her towards the door.

"Now?" Darket asked, surprised.

"Well, it _has_ been long enough," Yalla replied.

 

* * *

 

"So, I've got to know," Darket's human co-worker asked the next day, "did you use the pick-up line?"

"Obviously not," her asari co-worker said.

"I came up with one of my own," Darket said.

"What, really?" the human blinked. "Well, now I want to know what it was."

"I think you have been nosy enough," Darket replied, and turned away so nobody could see her smile. 

Some things, Darket decided, she only wanted Yalla to observe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the spirit of continued support, this fic is getting Patch 1.01. From this point on I will include the names of the relevant characters in each chapter heading! Hopefully this will make the fic easier to navigate, since each chapter is something of a one-shot.


	7. Evelyn & Hasuul

It wasn't soon after the asari ark Leusinia was found by the Pathfinder, that Prodromos began preparing to receive its next large wave of colonists.

This entailed its own kind of controlled chaos. Pre-fabricated dwellings had to be shot down from orbit to expand the colony. Cain Fawkes, the chief engineer, had to expand the colony's infrastructure sooner than he'd have liked, and had to figure out thirteen brilliant new solutions to unexpected problems. Evelyn Kearns spent two weeks running the fabricator non-stop, preparing everything from beds to kitchenware. Kim Connor in Supply had to adjust her rate of acquisitions to ensure they would have sufficient supplies for the new population boom.

Hasuul found the entire process fascinating to observe, and he became curious to know if something similar happened every time.

"Yep, this is how it usually goes," Evelyn said, in between inputting data into the fabricator. "Like finals week, but with less coffee to go around."

"What are you making now?" Hasuul asked.

Evelyn paused for a moment, her expression turning sly.

"Extra credit," she said. "Don't tell the dean."

"I have no idea what any of that means," Hasuul assured her.

Evelyn gestured for him to come closer, and pointed to the fabricator.

She had printed one of her high resolution sunrise photos onto a cardboard sheet. Hasuul took a moment to appreciate it; the camera had not captured the auroras of the sunrise, so it displayed only what human eyes saw, but even lacking any electro-magnetic impression, it was still a stunningly beautiful image. Orange and green light lent a beautiful sense of the ethereal to the dunes and rock formations of Eos. Shadows stretched long and sharp, and the few scattered clouds in the morning sky were lined in pastel shades.

"I'm making a jigsaw puzzle," Evelyn explained, and just at that moment, the fabricator's cutting lasers began tracing pinpoints of red light across the surface of the photograph, in a distinct pattern.

"What's a... a _jig-saa_ puzzle?" Hasuul asked, trying to discern the meaning of the shapes.

"It's sort of like a game," Evelyn said. "Or... an activity? I think puzzles are more like an activity. It's a puzzle."

As the fabricator finished, she reached over and broke a piece off the corner, handing it to Hasuul. Hasuul could see how every piece of cardboard had both inward slots and outwards tabs, fitting into each neighboring piece.

"You take it apart, and put it together again," Evelyn said, and began crumbling off whole pieces and shoving them into a plastic ziploc bag. The bag had the image of the sunrise printed on the from, perhaps for identification.

"Ah, for fun?" Hasuul asked.

"Yeah! You can do them alone, or with other people," Evelyn shrugged. 

"Do you plan to do this one with someone?" Hasuul asked, casting Evelyn a sidelong look.

"Oh, no, this one's not for me," Evelyn said.

"...Oh."

"It's for the asari we have coming in."

"Oh?" Hasuul's eyeridges rose, and he tilted his head curiously. Evelyn knew, by this point, that it meant he wanted her to explain.

"They're just, you know," Evelyn shrugged, suddenly self-conscious. "They had it rough, from what I hear."

"And you want to make it better with puzzles?"

"It's like..." Evelyn gestured one-handed, and Hasuul could see her gathering her thoughts. It was like watching a vid buffer, Max had joked once. "Asari... they like putting things together until everything fits. They like to believe that once they have all the pieces, and know what all the pieces mean, and how they fit together, then they'll understand the larger picture. Deep down, they like to believe the universe is a comprehensible whole."

Hasuul considered the words for a few moments. "The puzzle is an allegory for their religion?"

"No. Well--" Evelyn laughed. "Maybe, sort of. The thing is, they didn't know what the kett wanted or why they had to go through that ordeal on the Leusinia. So the puzzle is just to give them control over a tangible piece of the universe."

"It's therapeutic, then," Hasuul concluded. Evelyn had finished gathering all the pieces into the ziploc bag, and he dropped the piece he was holding as well into it.

"I just figured they'd like it," Evelyn mumbled, as she closed the bag. She placed it on a nearby counter, alongside at least a dozen other similar bags, with identifying photos on the front. Some were nature shots from around Eos. One was a shot of Prodromos, taken from somewhere up high, and another was a shot of the giant arch over Prodromos.

"I also think they will like it," Hasuul said, smiling widely at Evelyn.

"And," she said, her smile turning shy, "I did make one puzzle for my own personal use. Don't suppose you'd like to try it one day?" she asked.

"I would love to," Hasuul said, beaming at her. "You can bring it to our house. Gavvil and Sirida would find it fascinating, I am sure."

"Oh, I-- sure," Evelyn chuckled. "Sure, we'll all have a blast."

"And after that, perhaps I can finally show you that sunset, yes?" Hasuul continued.

Evelyn's chuckle turned into more of a giggle at that point.


	8. Darket/Yalla

Kim Connor was having a _day_.

She supposed, considering how badly things could really go, she didn't have much room to call it a bad day, exactly. But she was still, most definitely, having a _day_.

"This is an... interesting list," she said, as she brought up the requisition form.

"Yes," Evelyn said. "I'm glad you think so."

"Is it meant to be this alarming?"

"I'm planning a thing."

"Ah. You are... planning a thing. Which requires an industrial power drill?"

"Well, it doesn't _require_ it, but it certainly would make the job a bit quicker."

Kim Connor took a sip of her coffee--god, she needed it this morning, and she didn't care how low her reserves had gotten--and she considered the list again. One item on the list was a new mineral only just discovered in Andromeda, whose full properties hadn't even been documented yet. Just what was Evelyn planning?

"Would a jackhammer work?" Kim asked.

Evelyn sighed.

"I suppose it will have to. Can I requisition a biotic as well?"

"They aren't... really the kind of thing you requisition," Kim said, blinking.

"Never mind, I'll figure it out," Evelyn said, and quickly tapped out something on her datapad. It looked like she was posting a notice on the colony infoboard.

Kim supposed that meant she was going to 'requisition' a biotic on her own, which suited Kim just fine. She had no idea what exactly Evelyn was up to and she did not plan to be involved in this particular paper trail if she had a choice about it.

"And I assume you've also... requested permission? From the proper authorities?"

"Sure, yeah. You can assume that."

 

* * *

 

Darket and Yalla had fallen into a routine of sorts.

In all honestly, there was not yet much to do in Prodromos. There was nothing resembling a nightlife--indeed, with how hard most people worked, most of the colony turned in as soon as the sun set--and whatever social life the colonists cobbled together was more of an improvised, individualized affair rather than centered on community events. This was very much still a pioneer town.

So most obvious dating activities, such as going out or engaging in shared hobbies, were still very much out, as things went. They had seen a couple of vids together, usually at one of their homes, where their respective families were a constant--even if not unwelcome--presence, and they of course saw each other at the lab, but mostly they went for walks together.

There was something charming about Prodromos in the dusty hour of twilight, when the heat of the day was just abating and everyone shuffled towards home.

Their shadows stretched long before them as they walked together. They held hands, but Yalla was rarely satisfied with just the touch of their palms, instead holding Darket close enough that their forearms pressed together, and their shoulders brushed against each other. It was... not unpleasant, Darket decided. It was in fact pleasant enough that it took Darket a few minutes to notice that Yalla was taking her along a different path than usual.

"Are we... going somewhere?" Darket asked.

"Typically, walking does involve going somewhere," Yalla replied, and quirked a smile. Her eyes were sparkling with mischief.

Darket narrowed her eyes.

"Hm," she said flatly, giving Yalla a sidelong look. She couldn't discern Yalla's intentions yet, but Darket had gotten better at making out the signs of a blush--the deepening tint along the paler yellow-green of her face, the way the contrast with the darker green of her coloration was accentuated beautifully, especially in the warm Eos light--

On second thought, Darket wasn't able to discern much at all. She did continue looking, enough that Yalla's eyes darted towards her, and then away, as her blush deepened.

"If you only look at me, you will miss the entire reason we are taking this route," Yalla said with a giggle.

"Hm?" Darket reflexively looked around then, and realized they were walking along the lake.

A beat later, Darket realized what was on the water surface.

"Are those Palaven ash-lilies?" Darket asked breathlessly, walking to the water's edge.

But something about them was slightly off, the petals not as thick and slimy as they should be, not as slick and shiny as ash-lilies usually were.

"They're supposed to be," Yalla said. "I think Evelyn made them from... laminated paper?"

"Oh!" Darket looked closer, and she could see the edges of the illusion, the giant net floating just under the water surface that all the flowers were attached to. 

But the sight had wrenched something inside her chest, something six hundred years away and a galaxy removed. She clung harder to Yalla's hand.

"It could be like this for real one day, though," Darket whispered. She tilted her head to look at Yalla, and she could see the worry in her face, at the corners of Yalla's eyes. "It's beautiful, thank you," Darket said.

A smile split Yalla's face then, and she leaned up and kissed Darket on the cheek.

"I'm glad you like it," Yalla said. "I wanted to make sure you would, before I showed you the-- well, the other thing." Yalla's expression turned very serious. "I understand what Mayor Bradley said about not stepping on people's grief. I wouldn't want to cause you any pain."

"O... kay," Darket said, still disarmed by the overwhelming emotional honestly angara tended to express. "What other thing?" she asked instead.

"I can't tell you, that's not how surprises work!" Yalla declared.

Darket chuckled, and let herself be dragged off by Yalla towards the edge of Prodromos.

They passed the outermost buildings and actually continued on, towards the cliff face. Darket saw the cave as soon as she managed to tear her eyes away from Yalla, so really just as they were walking up to it.

"Now," Yalla said, producing a small flashlight and turning it on, "please watch your step."

Yalla aimed the flashlight at the floor, so that would be quite easy, but Darket still clung close to Yalla. Darket rather liked where this was going; it reminded her of the time she and her first girlfriend had watched a horror vid together, and her girlfriend had proceeded to spend half the movie in Darket's lap, pretending to be terrified so as to maneuver herself in perfect makeout position.

Darket didn't think this was going quite to the same place, however.

Yalla was intent as she kept the flashlight's circle of illumination on the floor; it was messy, littered with rocks and dust, and Darket had to actually watch her step.

"Ah, here we are!" Yalla said, as they reached the back wall of the small cave. She shut off the light, and Darket was taken aback.

But a flicker of blue light soon cut through the darkness. Electricity flared, concentrated around Yalla's hand as she touched the wall. Miniature lightning danced at her fingertips, but something under Yalla's skin also seemed to glow softly, outlining the exposed parts of her flesh in the dark in a delicate blue. Then the glow in Yalla's skin seemed to pour into the wall, and spread out in a growing pool across the wall.

Darket did not understand what she was looking at until the image on the wall took shape: someone had created a mosaic out of small pieces of some kind of phosphorescent blue stones, and the more electricity Yalla poured into it, the brighter it glowed. When Yalla was done, and removed her hands, the image which formed was sharp and clear, a spiral galaxy.

It was the Milky Way, Darket realized, and felt quietly awed by the sight of it like this.

The glowing blue disk of the galaxy cast a blue glow on everything, illuminating the cave in steady light. But Yalla's glow seemed to come from within, her eyes like self-contained galaxies themselves, and she turned to look hopefully at Darket.

"Do you like it?" Yalla asked, and then bit her lip.

Darket hooked an arm around Yalla's waist and spun her around, pressing her with her back against the mosaic. The image formed a blue halo around Yalla's head.

"Yalla, it's beautiful," Darket said. "And you're radiant."

It was true, Yalla was still bioluminescent, something that likely wouldn't have been noticeable at all outside, even in the twilight, but that was more than evident in the darkness of the cave. Yalla laughed, and Darket noticed that the mosaic brightened and dimmed very slightly, in time with Yalla's breathing. Darket tightened her hold on Yalla's waist, feeling breathless all of a sudden. 

They had never been so close, or so alone before. Privacy was still hard to come by, especially on their long walks. And Yalla was accommodating of Darket's sensibilities regarding public displays of affection, even if it was not the angara way to hide such things.

Now, though... Now Darket pressed close, and kissed Yalla. She was soft and warm, and still limned in blue. Her lips moved slowly against Darket's, and then harder, more decisively. Darket nipped gently at her lower lip, and Yalla made a deep sound in her throat and nipped right back. 

Darket could still feel the buzz of electricity, feel the taste of it in her mouth. Body to body with Yalla, Darket could feel the electricity make her carapace hum, and a heat pooled in her body like heavy light settling inside her.

Overwhelmed in the best of ways, Darket settled her forehead against Yalla's, breathing deeply.

"Since you appreciate art so much, we will have to come visit this place more often," Yalla said, sounding out of breath but pleased.

Darket laughed, and this seemed to please Yalla even more. 

They did not leave for some time.


End file.
